New York City police officers are under investigation for using a chokehold, a move banned under NYPD rules, on a man accused of skipping subway fare. The incident occurred three days before Eric Garner died during a similar arrest.

Videos posted online show two New York Police Department officers
wrangling with Ronald Johns, 22, on July 14 while using the
banned technique. The officers are also seen punching Johns in
the face. Pepper spray was also used in the “struggle” to subdue him, officers said
according to court papers.

Johns was pursued by officers for allegedly sneaking through an
emergency exit and refusing to show ID at an East Harlem subway
station, according to court records first reported by DNAInfo. He was charged with
turnstile-jumping, resisting arrest, and trespassing.

Police say Johns “flailed his arms and twisted his body to
prevent Officer [Colin] McGuire from putting handcuffs on
him," according to a criminal complaint.

Bystanders watching the arrest can be heard chiding officers for
aggression - “Stop punching him!” one man shouts - while
others pleaded with Johns to allow officers to apply handcuffs to
his wrists.

NYPD Internal Affairs are reportedly investigating the incident. The two officers
in the case say they were injured in the process of the arrest
and were on medical leave as of Wednesday,
CBS New York reported.

Johns was eventually released without bail and is due to face
charges in court in September.

The incident was reminiscent of the chokehold NYPD officers
applied to Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who died on July 17
in the process of his aggressive arrest for allegedly selling
cigarettes illegally. The city medical examiner has yet to
determine whether the chokehold applied to Garner - who suffered
from acute asthma - was the cause of his death.

Garner’s funeral was held on Wednesday at a Brooklyn church,
where police misconduct and racial motivations involved in
episodes of police brutality were at the forefront, Reuters reported.

"We are going to march until we no longer have to come to
funerals for this reason," Bishop Victor Brown of Staten
Island's Mount Sinai United Christian Church said to an approving
congregation at Bethel Baptist Church.

"We are going to continue to march until there is drastic
reform of the policy of the New York City police department so
that when police officers show up in our community we will no
longer have to fear for our lives and run from their
presence."

NYPD police commissioner Bill Bratton has said he did not think
race was a factor in Garner’s violent arrest. New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio - who called Garner’s death a tragedy - hired Bratton
in the course of supposed efforts to mend relations with black
and Latino communities disproportionately targeted by the city’s
stop-and-frisk policy, which was deemed unconstitutional by a
federal judge last year.

“We’re going to do more than just a review of Staten
Island,” Bratton said Tuesday. “The department needs to
do a lot — a lot — in the area of training.”

Yet Bratton’s young term as commissioner has done little to curb criticism of the NYPD’s methods, and the death of Garner, 43, seems
to have further inflamed long-standing tensions.

"Let's not play games with this," activist and
television personality Rev. Al Sharpton said during Garner’s
service. "You don't need no training to stop choking a man
saying, 'I can't breathe!' You don't need no cultural orientation
to stop choking a man saying, 'I can't breathe!' You need to be
prosecuted."

Though chokeholds have been banned by the NYPD since 1993, the
Civilian Complaint Review Board announced over the weekend that
there have been 1,022 complaints about the technique’s use between
2009 and 2013.